Canter Bridge

When the apostle Paul urges his readers to practice joy, he is not mixing categories. On the surface, one might expect the opposite. How can joy be commanded? How does one pursue and practice what is widely regarded as an epiphenomenon of fortunate circumstance? Or, to put things in more adversarial terms, who does this man think he is to be urging psychological tricks upon his befuddled followers?

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Yet Paul is hardly pollyanish. Indeed, he can be quite frontal about his own quota of suffering.

Far from opting out of reality in favor of a convenient construction that resides only in his mind, Paul is ever the realist. He truly believes that reality—seen for what it is most deeply, most unalterably—is cause for joy. It is the frailty of human perception and the vagaries of the human heart that cloud our view. This, for Paul, is not some inherent deficiency of the soul that can be cured by the right set of enlightenment techniques. On the contrary, Paul believes that darkest evil has too long had its way with the world. The nature of things is badly torn. Human rebellion has shat upon the Creator’s most generous gifts and then loudly proclaimed its false victory.

Joy does not come, for Paul, in deluding oneself that things are not so bad after all.

Joy is worth pursuing, we are asked to believe, because the God and Father of Jesus Christ is just that good, the redemption of all awful things is inexorable, and appearances to the contrary are due to fleeting, distracted attention to temporal realties that will—though not without judgment and loss—be fixed one day so that creation and its grateful residents can only sing.

Joy, peace even, do not come from looking away. They are to be found—Paul believes we must be instructed in this way because his truth is not self-evident—by peering ever more intently into reality and its doxological destiny.